Jean-Marc Léger has written a book that only a Quebecker could write. The famed pollster says so himself – and the bold title he’s chosen gives away the reason.

Cracking the Quebec Code: The 7 keys to understanding Quebecers, makes the kind of tantalizing promises for itself that a reader might expect from a marketing guru like Mr. Léger. “For the first time,” a foreword boasts, “English Canadians will have access to Quebeckers’ best-kept secrets.” Here, finally, is a “skeleton key” to the “question of Québécitude.”

Co-written with journalist Pierre Duhamel and business scholar Jacques Nantel, the book uses survey data, interviews with provincial leaders and a novel approach measuring reactions to hundreds of key words to come up with seven traits that define the Quebec character:

The usual chorus of Quebec politicians and pundits chanted lamentations over the 2016 census data published on Aug. 2. Even after Statistics Canada confirmed that a computer error had categorized thousands of French speakers as English, even after corrected figures were published on Aug. 17, the call was raised for tougher legislation to curtail English.

But while provinces have jurisdiction over how to deliver their services, there is of course an important constraint on that power: the constitutional protection for all Canadians of the rights and freedoms identified in the Charter. The question in the case of Bill 62, which seems unfairly to target women and Muslims, and which assumes the state has the right to impose a dress code, transcends jurisdiction.These are the fundamental issues raised in a court challenge of the law launched last week by the National Council of Canadian Muslims, among other organizations and individuals. And, as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau now seems to recognize, they are clearly issues of national interest.Trudeau said on Monday that his government is considering its options. It has a few: it could, for instance, add its voice to the challenge as an intervener; it could seek to speed up the process by referring the law to the Supreme Court; and it could contribute financially to the procedure. Whatever approach it chooses, Ottawa should be unafraid to lead.

15 November 2017

Last week, news broke that the Parti Québécois had quietly tried to block prominent lawyer Tamara Thermitus’s candidacy for the presidency of Quebec’s human rights commission. Unnamed sources suggested that despite her impeccable credentials, her job with the federal government was a liability and, worse, she was suspected of harbouring multiculturalist beliefs.This bit of backstory should raise more than eyebrows.It is well known that multiculturalism is verboten among Quebec’s political and chattering classes, regardless of partisan affiliation. However, to have multicult-phobia actually move a political party to reject a qualified candidate (who also happens to be a black woman) should tell us something about how pernicious the current ideology is ...

30 October 2017

The turning point in the 2015 federal
election campaign in Quebec came in mid-September, a month before voting
day, when the Federal Court of Appeal struck down a Conservative
government ban on face coverings at citizenship ceremonies. For New
Democratic Leader Tom Mulcair, it was the moment of truth that ended his
party’s long run atop the polls in the province it had swept in 2011.

The NDP had come face-to-face with its own two solitudes.

The
Quebec left is uncompromisingly secularist. While it supports freedom
of religion, it believes that visible manifestations of faith are to be
discouraged in the public sphere, lest they impinge on the separation
between church and state. Quebeckers fought hard to throw off an
oppressive Catholic Church and see any religious accommodation by the
state as a threat to the gains of the Quiet Revolution. More recently
inspired by France’s secularist approach, the Quebec left supports
strict limits on where and when religion can be practised.

The federal New Democratic Party has long played footsie with Quebec separatists, but recent statements by the new leader, Jagmeet Singh, suggest that the party has become more audacious in its advances.

The fluently bilingual Mr. Singh last week told reporters in Alma, Quebec, that, if a majority of Quebeckers voted to secede from Canada in a third referendum, he would "respect the decision of the people, without fail and without a doubt."

"[The right of self-determination] is so fundamental, and if people choose their future, I am completely in agreement with their decision," he said.

19 October 2017

Much like past proposals by the former Parti Québécois government under Pauline Marois, the law here is defended on the grounds of Quebec secularism, but it is a perversion of secularism, which would normally see the state refuse to adopt or sanction particular religions over others. Instead, the version of secularism to which Quebec's political class seems to adhere is simply anti-religion, and more specifically, religions not reflected by the giant cross hanging in the National Assembly.

18 October 2017

“The Reference requires us to consider whether Quebec has a right to unilateral secession. Those who support the existence of such a right found their case primarily on the principle of democracy. Democracy, however, means more than simple majority rule.”

This was a unanimous Supreme Court of Canada in 1998’s reference decision on Quebec secession. The Court went on to declare that only “a clear majority on a clear question” could compel the federal government and the other provinces to engage in negotiations with Quebec on the matter.

It is true the Court did not specify what would actually count as a “clear majority” (55 percent? 60? 67?). That, the justices said, was a matter for the political actors to decide. What is crystal clear, for anyone with the scarcest smidgen of reading comprehension, is that a “clear majority” is something more than 50 percent plus one. The highest court in the land has made an explicit distinction between “simple majority” and “clear majority.”